In the fourth episode of Voces desde y para los mercados, I interview Tania Eneva/Stoyanka Andreeva Eneva about her research on marketplaces and gentrification. The episode is available on this website or my audio.com page.

Interviewing Tania was an exceptional opportunity to explore how marketplaces become such a relevant research topic for social scientists. Tania’s journey as an undergraduate and master’s student and later as a postgraduate researcher tells us a bit about the fascinating circumstances that put marketplaces at the centre of formative processes. It also reveals the captivating nature of marketplaces and their capacity to condense urban tensions and possibilities at multiple scales.

Tania’s work on marketplaces is the result of multiple conversations and collaborations whose primary objective has been to unpack and denounce the impact of gentrification on marketplaces. In this episode, she shares insights from her work on Madrid and Sofia’s marketplaces to provide us with a broad perspective on the actors and mechanisms involved in the privatisation marketplaces. In this conversation, Tania also discusses the grassroots initiatives that oppose these tendencies and advocate for traditional marketplaces that operate as collective assets and genuinely serve their local communities.

Tania’s work on marketplaces includes Contested identities and ethnicities in the marketplace: Sofia’s city centre between the East and the West of Europe (2018). She co-authored with Adrián Cordero (UAM, Mexico) Disputa por los mercados públicos abandonados (2017) and ¿Mercados, museos o malls? La gentrificación de los mercados municipales en Barcelona y Madrid (2016). You can also read her contribution to Popular marketplaces: Experiences and reflections for their preservation and improvement on this website or the University of Sheffield’s data repository, ORDA.

Episode 5 will be available next week!